“Don’t flood my inbox with boring and irrelevant emails!”
Does this sound like your personal? Let’s face it, a lot of staff think that internal emails interrupt their work. Even when they’ve bothered to read them, they still have the problem of what to do with all those ‘internal emails’ clogging up their inboxes. Workers say that 34% of the internal email they receive is unnecessary. The average worker spends 49 minutes a day managing email. 24% of workers say they spend more than one hour a day on this task. (Gartner/eCompany).
Try these tips to reduce email overload within your organization.
Use informative headings
Use an informative text message for the subject line. Your reader doesn’t even have to spend time opening the email. They can read and erase. They get the message and save time.
Use headers in the body of your email as well. Think of reading a newspaper. How often do you scan the headlines? The same applies to your email. Structure your email logically and provide a header for each paragraph. Your reader will be able to find key information quickly by either scanning or searching.
Differentiate between urgent and non-urgent emails
Is your message critical, urgent, or just nice to know? Help staff by flagging emails. Don’t forget that your reader may have a very different idea of what is urgent. Mentally put yourself in their shoes. Decide how important email is to them. You can then indicate the level of urgency in the subject line or by using standard email symbols.
To make sure your staff has received important messages and then keep track of who has read them, you can use the Desktop Alert tool. Alternatively, a screen allows administrators to turn employee screen savers into a series of dynamically sequenced billboards. This format is ideal for messages that may not be urgent but are important from an employee “awareness” perspective.
Employees experiencing email overload are unlikely to notice these types of messages when they are sent as emails. However, screen savers can act as a subtle yet very powerful way to raise awareness and communicate key issues.
Group your ‘internal communications’ and send them at the same time every day
It may alarm you to learn that a study by the Scottish Universities of Glasgow and Paisley revealed that some staff members checked their inboxes 30-40 times an hour.
It’s often more efficient and productive to deal with emails at set times each day. You can help by sending through internal communications at the same time every day.
An email aggregation tool allows internal email aggregation into a company newsletter. So instead of IT sending an email update on an outage, marketing sending product information updates, and HR sending their staff updates via email, all of these messages can be consolidated into the same magazine quickly. And simple.
Manage group email lists and don’t deal with internal spam.
How often do you or your staff open an email and then spend several minutes deciding whether or not they need to read it? What a waste of time and email storage space! Try to appoint an email gatekeeper: someone who knows each email group, what information is relevant to each group, and what each group needs to know. The gatekeeper makes sure that each group receives only relevant emails. The Gatekeeper could also help develop clear email policies and procedures, so staff know which emails to delete and which to keep on file.
Target your audience and make emails relevant to them.
So when you’re writing an email, think about the people who will be reading it. Then write to them in a language they can understand. Make the message relevant to them and their role. Tell them why you are writing to them and what you want them to know, think or do. Whether you’re sending informational emails or publishing an internal magazine, you need to know your audience.
Use communication tools that allow you to target communications to specific groups of employees. Make sure they have reporting options that allow you to see exactly what people are reading and what is being ignored.
Keep the content short.
Use plain language and make use of informative headings. Busy staff don’t want to waste time getting to the message or figuring out what the message means. Emails in particular should be short and clear. Think about your reader and what you want them to think, know, or do. In other words, what do you want your message to accomplish? Decide on a logical order for your message. Then, with your reader in mind, write your message using simple language.
If you don’t have a clear idea of what you want to accomplish with your message, or if you don’t have a clear understanding of your audience, then stop writing.
Manage your emails and archive them effectively
If your organization doesn’t have clear guidelines for managing email, more and more employees may have inboxes groaning under the weight of hundreds of emails. This puts pressure on IT capacity, but there is a more sinister problem. Have you or your staff ever been unable to fully digest an important update or new information because your inbox is too full? It may be time to review your email management policy.
You could start by agreeing to a folder structure, so employees know where to keep email and, more importantly, where to find it. Agree on clear rules about which emails should be kept, how long they should be kept, when and if they should be archived, and which emails should be deleted once they have been read.
Once you’ve developed clear email sources, you can use quizzes, posters, and screen savers to reinforce and test your staff’s knowledge and understanding of your organization’s email policies.
Before you send an email, ask yourself, “Is email the best way to communicate this message?”
Email is sometimes used to convey confidential or even unpleasant messages, but this is simply not good practice. Examine and promote alternative ways of conveying the message. Why not use a staff meeting to think about all the different communication channels? You can engage staff by asking them to discuss the benefits and drawbacks of each option.
Try a ‘no email’ day
How often do your staff email the people sitting next to you? How often do you email when a face-to-face meeting or phone call would have been more effective?
A day without email may seem extreme to some people, but with so many communication channels available, including taking a coffee break with a group you need to relay information to, you shouldn’t find an email-free zone too difficult to manage. It is a good idea to encourage staff to think of alternative and more effective ways of communicating information.
Think outside the box.
How else can you get your message across? Why not list all the communication channels open to your organization and think about the pros and cons of each? Examine the typical types of information that staff in your organization send and receive on a regular basis.
Also think about the requirements that each type of message may need in order to be communicated successfully. Ask yourself, for example, do you need visual or voice cues? Or is the information confidential or sensitive? Or do I need additional information? Or is the message urgent? Involve staff in this process as it will help them improve their communication by helping them select the most effective communication channel. It will also remind them that some messages, especially those dealing with sensitive topics, are not suitable for emailing.
You might think that phone calls and face-to-face meetings take longer, but one company that implemented email-free days noted that making a real effort to reduce email overload resulted in better teamwork, satisfied customers, and better results. faster problem resolution.